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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26834404">Covenant</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarlyChameleon/pseuds/CarlyChameleon'>CarlyChameleon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Rag and Bone [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Animals, Cats, Feel-good, Feels, Gen, Halloween, Horror, Lovecraftian, Lovecraftian Monster(s), Lovecraftian Shenanigans, Magic, Spooky, Witchcraft</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:00:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,564</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26834404</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarlyChameleon/pseuds/CarlyChameleon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The neighborhood cats do their yearly October duty to keep us safe, as they have for over two centuries.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Rag and Bone [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1772380</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Covenant</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Just a fun thing I wrote for Halloween years ago.</p><p>There's a bit of violence toward the end, maybe a bit of a scare regarding one of the characters, but nothing particularly intense.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Humans forgot so easily. In fact, they had lost much more than they’d ever gained from their so-called intellectual and industrial revolutions.</p><p>Yet that they had forgotten wasn’t their true downfall—if all it took was a simple reminder then the world would have become a much different place. No, it was their eagerness to bury the truth that had put them and future generations on such a precarious path. Show something unpleasant to a human and he or she would look in the opposite direction. Worse: they twisted, trivialized, and tore reality to pieces until they could pretend there was nothing to worry about apart from what to make for supper.</p><p>Fortunate for them, there were some who had better memories.</p><p>In the burnished light of the sinking sun they began to gather. From modern middle-class homes, stately Victorians, and the refuse-clogged arteries of the alleyways between they came. Through backstreets and backyards they slunk, never heard and rarely seen. Though this night would bring the humans who shared the town out to celebrate, most were as oblivious as ever. </p><p>On they traveled until concrete and rows of houses gave way to grass and towering trees. A park, humans called it. The last remnant of land before it had been parceled into farm fields and tamed enough for the town to take root was what it was. Here it remained at the heart of civilization, the shadows of evening creeping across it like spilled ink as they had for millennia.</p><p>And, as they had for the past fraction of that, cats met beneath the tangled boughs for All Hallows Eve.<br/>
White, silk-furred heirs of Persia sauntered in with sleek Siamese and temple-bred Maus. Rangy strays padded alongside fat housecats and barnyard mousers. Calicos, tabbies, maltese, pointed—all came to honor the pact they and their ancestors before them had made. They streamed in to where the ancient trees grew thickest. Where the chill had little to do with autumn and the barren branches overhead crisscrossed like a jumble of old bones. No birds flitted or called their goodnights there. The usual tiny creatures that skittered through the leaf litter hadn’t reported in for their graveyard shift. A dank, primeval smell gave the air a weight it didn’t have elsewhere. </p><p>Fur bristled along the backs of the younger cats as they passed under the cobweb-like shadows. Their elders led by example, pressing on into ever deepening gloom. Finally, they saw it. At the dark heart of the old grove the ground gradually swelled up under their paws, rising into a large mound. Shaggy tufts of gray-green grass covered it like a mangy pelt. Fissures scarred the damp earth. </p><p>Three silent figures waited for them.</p><p>They watched their brethren approach with eyes as bright and orange as the full moon starting to climb over the horizon. Their fur was black, though the shadows veiling the scabrous landmark were darker still. It had been so even before the days that many of the Wise had fled to the New World. For a time, they and their familiars had found refuge from the inquisitors and the stake. Yet they were far from safe. It was they who were new, not the land. People had roamed it for tens of thousands of years already.</p><p>And before them…others.</p><p>From the great shamans of the New World who had guarded it since the first, the Wise had learned of the mound and what lay below. As the greed and hatred of the strangers from across the sea drove the shamans and their people from their native lands, the Wise took over the solemn duty as best they could. And when Cotton Mather and his ilk’s crusade finally caught up with them, it was their cats who had ensured there was a future to look forward to. </p><p>Around these descendants of the first the other cats huddled in a half circle. None made a sound, the silence pressing against them like phantom hands.<br/>
The eldest black cat looked up at the cage of branches above. No stars shone through, but she didn’t need them. Experience and instinct said the time was right. She stood and flicked her tail.</p><p>The other cats flowed into action, the initiates following the lead and remembered lessons of the veterans. To the east ran the lightest and swiftest of their number. West—never popular—was dutifully taken by the feral and rootless. Around the hillock to the north ran the guardians of hearths, barns, and rolling fields. Finally, those with bloodlines to rival any pharaoh or emperor took up their rightful place in the south. </p><p>Humans forgot, but cats didn’t, and so they came. To keep the covenant, call the quarters, and renew the binding. For all their sakes.</p><p>In that place of sterile silence, they started the chant. Not a string of simple sounds as some creatures understood it, but a rumble within them that each had known since before birth, tucked under their mothers’ hearts. It was the sound of sleeping in a warm pile with siblings, sharpening claws on a favorite sofa, lapping at a bowl of cream (or eating a well-guarded canary). It was perching on a fence under the full moon with a mate, climbing a tree without a thought about how to get back down, and everything worth living nine lives for. </p><p>Under the mound, something rolled over in fitful slumber. A tremor shuddered through the earth. The three witch-cats flattened their ears against their skulls, eyes aflame. There could only be one outcome to the battle: victory or death. The eldest black cat held her ground while her daughter and granddaughter sprinted away around either side of the quivering hillock.</p><p>There was a sibilant hiss as the old cracks zigzagging the mound began to split open. Streamers of mist drifted out, will o’ the wisp-blue in the murk yet illuminating nothing. Pupils wide and muscles tensed, the elder cat ignored the distractions. Her vigilance paid off. Amidst the ghostly tendrils something darker than the deepest shadows stirred. It flicked out experimentally like a lizard’s tongue, testing the air before slithering out toward the eastern quarter. Fangs bared in challenge, the matriarch bounded forward to make it think again.</p><p>Her claws swiped down and raked something as cold as winter and the consistency of rotted fruit. Quick as thought, her prey recoiled, The reek of a bog, of decay stewing for centuries, nettled her nose and she shook off a sneeze. Slime trails glistened to mark the tendril’s retreat. Careful not to foul her paws in it, she slipped closer to the yawning crack to make sure that one at least had learned its lesson.</p><p>Mid-step she spotted the trap: darkness flattened against the ground, blending with it. Smaller ropes shot up and over her in a net. She sprang aside fast but not far enough—an outside tendril lashed itself around her throat. Her snarl was crushed short, her paws yanked off the ground. She was caught, powerless to strike back.</p><p>However, she wasn’t alone.</p><p>A convulsion wracked the unnatural noose as her daughter’s claws shredded through its main body. There was a dizzying rush as the matriarch was swung around and released like a stone from a sling. She twisted in mid-air, instinct naturally guiding her paws to face the earth. It did nothing to soften the impact of her ribs slamming into one of the skeleton trees, though. She fell to the rough grass, still and silent.</p><p>Rather than stop, the chant of the other cats swelled, bolstered by a growling note of defiance. The air hummed with it, becoming warmer. A fresh breeze rattled the thatch-work branches. Streamers of light filtered between them, washing over the hillock until it shone within a silver circle. A groaning shriek welled up from beneath the ground. Soil heaved as the darkness retracted, the fissures caving in behind its retreat.</p><p>The battle was won for another year, but not without cost.</p><p>In the renewed light and peace of the grove, the cats gathered around their fallen matriarch. Tail drooping, her granddaughter padded forward. A rough pink tongue flicked out to lick the familiar face.</p><p>There was a twitch. Orange flickered and the old witch-cat’s eyes opened. A collective breath released.</p><p>Eight lives down. One to go. Time enough to see the wheel of the year turn once more. Watch another generation being born and growing. And to make sure they would remember.</p><p> -</p><p>Claws scraped against the door in the gray dawn light. Footsteps stomped through the house, and a few moments later the door flew open. A woman, robe clutched about her, glared down with sleep-sticky eyes.</p><p>“Jinx! Just where the hell did you get to, missy? Jason and the girls were up all night trick-or-treating and then searching the neighborhood for you! And look! You’re all covered in dirt.”</p><p>The only reply from the black cat sitting on the porch was to blink eyes the color of the jack o’ lanterns still on the front steps. </p><p>Heaving a sigh, the woman stepped aside. “Well, come on then! It’s freezing out there.”</p><p>Tail held high, the cat trotted into the warmth of the house. If she minded the grumbling human that trailed after her, she gave no sign. Cats kept secrets almost as well as they kept their promises.</p>
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